Toronto review from Globe and Mail

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think this review got skipped. From the Toronto
Globe and Mail at:
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20020930/RVWHOO/Arts/thearts/thearts_temp/3/3/16/

The Who's back, and why not?
By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
Monday, September 30, 2002  Page R3 

Classic rock in its best live manifestations has
become The Picture of Dorian Grey. The heads on the
stage become grey and wizened, while the sound
produced by aging lungs and fingers remains
deceptively young.

The difference is that Oscar Wilde's parable is a
gothic horror story. Shows like The Who's stand at the
Air Canada Centre are more like a mass-market wonder
story, with much approving attention focused on the
band's ability to buck the burden of years and hard
living.

Strictly speaking, The Who is half dead. The passing
of bassist John Entwistle in June cut the original
quartet down to two. In any case, the band has been
dormant for longer than it was creatively active. It
performed its first farewell concert 20 years ago, not
long after its last original album.

"I'm dealing with a memory that never forgets," Roger
Daltrey sang in You Better You Bet, as the large crowd
roared along with him. It was one of many
retrospectively prophetic lines. A few songs were
engulfed by meanings unforeseen at the time of their
writing. The breezy vision of freedom articulated in
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere sounds a lot less bohemian
when you know that the performers are millionaires.

Daltrey and Pete Townshend openly acknowledged the
passage of time in The Kids Are Alright, which they
filled out with reflective inserts about their bygone
youth and the state of their own kids. The effect was
chilled somewhat by the following My Generation, with
its inevitably ironic wish that "I hope I die before I
get old."

It was a dynamic show that did not attempt to recreate
the sound of the earliest, leanest version of the
band. The bulked-up arrangements and extended jams
were essentially an early-eighties take on the old
material. This incarnation of The Who was like a clock
that still ticked loudly, but whose hands were frozen
at the last time recorded when the mechanism was fully
sound.

Even My Generation, the most currently potent of all
songs from the catalogue, had a fatter sound and
looser beat than the iconic recorded version. It was
as if the players had forgotten the very features that
other, younger bands have remembered and imitated.

The best single item on the show was Behind Blue Eyes,
a still powerful song that began with a stripped verse
and chorus by Daltrey and Townshend before pulling in
the rest of the touring sextet. It achieved in one
number a museum tour of the entire Who experience,
from the mean-street sound of the sixties to the
penthouse upholsteries of later days.

Daltrey sang strongly with only a slightly roughened
edge, and worked some familiar lariat-like tricks with
his microphone cord. Townshend's numerous solos proved
that he can still tease old formulas into shapes that
sound new, and gratified the fans with the whirling
full-arm stroke he invented and which probably only
makes practical sense to a golfer.

Drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) and bassist
Pino Palladino offered fair if uncompelling
recreations in the style of Keith Moon and Entwistle
respectively. John "Rabbit" Bundrick provided some
automatic-sounding keyboard action, while Townshend's
brother Simon stepped in on backing guitar and vocals.

It was a fine concert of its type, and the fans
absorbed everything with the greedy openness of a
sponge. Shows like this require a certain complicity
between musicians and audience, and as long as that
remains possible, The Who need never trouble
themselves further with The Why.


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
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